Will you agree to a paycut to save your colleagues?

[Speddevil]

you are right in your view. Collective bargaining is to negotiate for better employment terms with the boss. Once agreed, boss cannot anyhow vary or changes the terms without the employees consent. To vary or make changes, i suppose there is an expiry terms on the agreement.

 

With regards to performance appraisals, this is a mechanism that is often misused by majority. There is an element of human intervention which is sometime difficult to quantify. The 'emotional feeling rule the heart'which is attributed to favourism or 'favourite'. To be effective, it must be implement in a fair, transparent manner for the benefit of the employees

[BMW320i]

I wrote a thesis regarding Induatrial Relations in Australia compared to Asia Pacific region. In every system there are flaws and benefits to the equality of Industrial Relation system. Australia on the other hand has a very messy history of industrial relations system.

 

I am not sure if some may agree with me or if this may be a taboo subject but in Australia, their form of governance of a country is more kept in checked. In saying that, what I am trying to imply is that in Australia you have a shadow minister who has the power to investigate or even file for a congressional hearing if he/she deem the government to be performing in an unethical manner.

 

In Singapore we do not have a shadow minister or even any form of governance over the very people who are governing this country.

 

That is to say we have a 1 party rule who has a final say with no governing body dictating what the government is doing is right or wrong. In such situation, what the government says becomes implemented legislatively or what I would like to call it, "Gospel".

 

In reference to Unions, when you have a 1 party rule that decides that in the interest of our nation's economic goals, we will attract foreign direct investments through empowering our employers by legislative measures.

 

If we had some sort of shadow minister, this would have been absurbly brought up in parliament with immense amount of protest to the legitimacy of such a legislation. However this is Singapore and we do not have such systems in place to keep governments in check.

 

I would not debate about how inferior or superior Singapore's political and industrial relation systems is as this may lead to a very lengthy topic, but I hope most would get the idea.

 

I do not agree that unions should possess too much power nor should any parties of the tripartite system. Issues like work to rule, strikes etc has detrimental effects toward the livelihood of a company. It is always in the Company and Union's best interest to cooperate and negotiate at a level which is deemed reasonable.

 

In real world, this is very hard to achieve as any obligations toward accepting offers made by either party signifies weakness. Unions and employers will have to resort to bringing their needs and wants closer and agree on relevant terms and conditions.

 

Such a system takes two hands to clap. Clearly if you look at France for example, it is obvious their system has failed miserably.

[BMW320i]

I agree. Inherently speaking, moral hazard will always serve as an impediment.

[Speddevil]

yup i do agreed that Australia has a messy history of industrial relation system. But with the new govt that oust out the howard govt which the earlier system seems oppressed and unfair, the forward with fairness act is at least more fair in a sense for the employee to seek justice if they are unfairly treated or dismissed. Employer will think twice to play hanky business with the employee if there is a legislation that regulate their action. For local, sad to say that MOM does not do much to fight for the employee and help those employees who are unfairly, unjustly treated.

 

Bro i am interested to look at your thesis to learn, expose more. Care to share your thesis ?

Edited November 18, 2008 by Speddevil

[Speddevil]

I suppose that is part & parcel of life

[Slayer]

Would you take a pay cut to keep jobs or would you rather the company retrench employees?

 

ask yourself, do u want your colleague to take pay cut to save you?

[BMW320i]

I would have to look through my tons of papers and have it scanned as I did this unit a while back.

 

The previous Howard Government has implemented the Australia Workplace Agreement (AWA) legislation. This enables unfair dismissal and enable people to bargain at a personal level if I recall correctly, this applies to company with employee size of up to 100 or more. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

AWA was implemented in Howard's last year in office. This made him extremely unpopular and opposition parties bombarded him with TV advertisements in regards to that matter. Before elections took place everyone somewhat knew he threw the short stick with 53 to 47 on election night.

 

With the new government in place, Kevin Rudd will run AWA for approximately I think, 2 years before revamping industrial relation system.

 

This was something which I argued in my thesis that when you have 2 party rules, industrial relations is constantly changing to different system whenever respective government rules. It is extremely messy and companies are often subjected to penalties because they are unable to keep up with it. While you have a one party rule such as John Howard's days, too much power is given to one party. Although the Shadow Minister was able to object the implementation of such a rule, John Howard's Liberal party held majority of the seats, which meant that any changes made to legislation will almost guarantee a 90% approval.

 

Theres a bit of a conundrum there. Anyway my recommendations in my thesis were BS according to my unit controller and he commented quite negatively on it saying I was trying to build a fantasy governance that was never going to exist.

[Speddevil]

Bro good work. Cool. It will be interesting to take a look Have PM you my email

[Gabriel]

yupz..dats why ..me haf frens..who gave it all up..

and do simple jobs..with less pressure and stress like dis...

 

and they are living happier lives ...

though to the outside world..they are stupid and have done the wrong thing..or should i say make the wrong choice

[Grx80]

Plenty of respect for your friend who sacrificed to sustain his employees... bet his employees will pledge their loyalty to the company even more and they would go thru thick and thin with the company even more in the future.

[Modykoh]

well, i beg to differ..and would say that union is more pro employer...if too hush to emplyer for the fear that they may pullout...

 

 

i am referring to the 'basic' welfare la, more of benifits etc ...not to the extend of strikes...